Athens' Whatever It Takes initiative is taking another stab at a $30 million federal grant to fund social services for students from low-income families.

The five-year grant would fund "all (students) need to be healthy, safe and successful in school, and hopefully go on to graduate from some sort of post-secondary education, whether it's college or technical school or on-the-job training," WIT director Tim Johnson said.

WIT has focused on students in the Alps Elementary School attendance zone, but it's proposing expanding to the Fowler Drive Elementary School zone, Johnson said. While both neighborhoods are among the poorest in Athens, they have little else in common: the Alps Road area, which includes the Rocksprings and Pauldoe public housing projects, is urban and primarily African-American, while Fowler Drive in rural northeastern Athens is mainly Hispanic. In those two zones, unemployment is 15 percent, the graduation rate is only 51 percent, and the poverty rate for families with children in public schools is 90 percent, according to WIT's grant application.

"In addressing the needs of those two schools, we feel like the lessons learned will apply to any school in the district," Johnson said.

WIT, formed by the nonprofit Family Connection-Communities In Schools in 2009, narrowly missed out on a Promise Neighborhood grant last year. The group stayed afloat with other grant money and by working with the Clarke County School District and other partners, Johnson said.